


What's in a (soulmark) name?

by chacusha



Category: Bravely Default (Video Game) & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, just some pointless angst and fluff, mainly a rehash of the first game tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 00:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20349703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chacusha/pseuds/chacusha
Summary: What if Bravely but soulmarks though? A series of short vignettes from World 6 and World 5 of three people struggling with their soulmarks. Alternis and Edea's soulmarks said the right name of their soulmate but not which world they came from...





	1. World 6: Alternis

Alternis's soulmark came in when he was fourteen. He only noticed it when he was washing his face one day and looked in the mirror. There it was, smackdab in the middle of his forehead. What horrible luck, having a soulmark in such a prominent, stupid-looking location. Alternis mentally played back the last few days to reassure himself that no one had been in a position to see the words on his face. He sighed in relief. Not for the first time in his life, he thanked the Crystals for bestowing upon him the Dark Knight asterisk that allowed him to spend most of his time covered from head to toe in armor. Nothing in the past few days indicated that anyone had noticed his mark. No teasing, no knowing looks.

As Alternis squinted at the backwards, still-somewhat-fuzzy letters in the mirror, though, his embarrassment at manifesting his soulmark dropped suddenly away into stunned, breathless excitement.

Edea Lee. _Edea Lee!_

He lay curled up in his bed for an hour afterwards, almost too agitated to fully process the meaning of what he had just found out. The grand marshal's daughter. How could such a thing be possible? Should he tell someone? And if so, when would be the right time to do so? Edea was still only a child, just nine years old. And no doubt the event of her soulmark appearing would be of great interest to her parents and people in Eternia more generally -- Alternis would hear of it.

He would have to tell someone eventually, but for now, it might be best to keep it quiet, hidden under his armor, until Edea's soulmark made it official. It would only require a small amount of diligence more than Alternis normally put into making sure he was never without armor in public.

* * *

As the years went on, Edea's lack of a soulmark became a source of anxiety for Alternis. Occasionally, when it seemed polite and natural to do so, he would ask Mahzer if Edea's soulmark had come in yet. She would tell him no, and Alternis had no reason to think she would lie to him. (Although that didn't stop a paranoid instinct in him from wondering if a family might possibly hide that information if they were ashamed about the name on the soulmark.) But Mahzer did not in any way seem to hint that she had any suspicions about Alternis's soulmark. When she would turn the question back on him, and he would reply self-consciously that he too did not have one, she took him at his word and assured him in that warm, caring way of hers that he would get one.

By the time he was twenty years old, though, the lie was hard to maintain. Most people got theirs sometime shortly after puberty started, if not even earlier. So at last he confessed quietly to Mahzer when they were alone that he did have a soulmark, and whose name was on it.

To his relief, Mahzer reacted to this revelation with as much happiness and warmth and approval as Alternis could hope for.

"Has Edea...?" he asked.

Mahzer shook her head. "Not yet, but she is still young." He could see a brief look of relief flash across his mother-figure's face. The older you got without a soulmark, the more people worried, but no doubt Alternis's revealing of his soulmark had set some fears of Mahzer's to rest.

"Until hers appears, would you please -- I would like to keep my soulmark a secret until --"

Mahzer immediately understood, swearing not to tell anyone what she knew.

* * *

When Edea turned against the Duchy, by all accounts her soulmark still hadn't come in -- but by then, that was the least of Alternis's worries. No amount of pleading on his part would sway her from her rebellion, and time was running out.

His hands were shaking on the wheel of the _Dark Knight_ as he waited for an airship to approach the pillar of light. Beneath his helm and his hair, her name was on his skin, and that had to mean _something,_ Alternis tried to remind himself. It had to mean that she and he -- the both of them -- would emerge from this safe. But the small paranoid voice in his mind reminded him of Edea's lack of a soulmark -- surely _that_ had to mean something as well, although exactly what even his paranoid side was too afraid to think too deeply on.

He only found out later, as he held Edea's heavy, lifeless body in his arms.

What did it all mean? How could life be so cruel as to write her name on his body and strike her down in front of his eyes, before their love had even been realized? Were the Celestials laughing at him? It was hard to think anymore -- Alternis's mind felt clouded, as if something important to its function had come undone.

Barely aware of what he was doing, Alternis laid Edea down gently and stood up again to fight the thing that had killed her. All his limbs were so numb that he could not even tell whether he had his sword in his hand, but at least he knew the darkness was with him. It always was.

The fight did not last long -- he had expected that. However, he had expected to die at the monster's hands; instead, the force of a swipe of her claws combined with an unexpected lurch of the ship, and Alternis suddenly lost his footing. Before he was aware of it, he was falling through empty air and more empty air, the rushing wind whipping tears painfully from his eyes.


	2. World 5: Alternis

It was only by coincidence -- or perhaps, luck -- that Alternis came to know of Edea's soulmark. It had come in earlier than typical, when she was only seven years old. They were playing in her bedroom, and he noticed some red marks on the sole of one of Edea's feet. When he pointed it out, she seemed as surprised to see it as he was.

They had stared at the letters for a while, slowly spelling them out. Normally, Edea read twice as quickly as he did or even faster, but in this case, Alternis was only a little slower to figure the letters out because he had been spending a lot of time recently writing them himself: _Alternis Dim._

His name.

At the time, the two of them had been too young to really have much reaction to the discovery other than amusement, but now that he was older, recalling the memory never failed to fill him with a flood of emotions -- excitement, embarrassment, anticipation, gratitude.

Alternis remembered the surprise with which Edea's parents had reacted to her soulmark. As she was so young and he did not have a soulmark, they didn't see the need to announce it or otherwise act on it in any way. As the years went on, that decision proved to be wise because Alternis's soulmark never came in. He was now in his twenties and it still hadn't made an appearance.

He was sure there must be some reason for it. In his research on Florem several years ago, he had discovered that vestalings of the Crystal Orthodoxy were made to imbibe a special potion, one that somehow permanently suppressed the manifestation of their soulmark. Those who were selected to be vestals for a crystal were then given a tattoo of their crystal on their back instead. Florem was the place where vestalings were trained, and it was the place Alternis had spent the early part of his life. It was not outside the realm of possibility that he might have come into contact with those potions or the ingredients used to make them, and that was why his soulmark would not manifest.

Still, the lack of a soulmark caused him and Braev and Mahzer all some anxiety. A couple of years ago, Braev had offered to hire a soulmark expert to take a look at Alternis's body, and Alternis knew better than to decline such an offer. It was a humiliating experience, though, being stripped bare and examined inch by inch by a complete stranger, and it had not turned up a soulmark. And there had been no news to speak of since then.

Between the years spent as an urchin and the secretive Dark Knight training, Alternis often felt like a ghost or a shadow, lurking on the edges of society and looking in at all the people for whom being a person seemed to come so easy. His missing soulmark often added to that feeling. But when he was feeling particularly discouraged, he would recall that moment of seeing his name on Edea's body and remind himself that it meant something. It meant he had a place where he would always belong.

He hadn't seen Edea's soulmark since then, and she never spoke of it. At times, he feared he had made the memory up, that it was nothing but the wishful daydream of a lonely child. But no, he was sure he had not imagined it. The soulmark examination that Braev had requested, humiliating as it was, was a confirmation that her parents had indeed seen Alternis's name written on her skin.

Such small scraps of hope were not much to cling to, but more than enough for a man such as Alternis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you understand the direction this ficlet is going, then you will understand that this is just me taking W5!Alternis's heart and stomping on it a lot, hahaha. 😊


	3. World 5: Ringabel

After a few hours, the question "What's your name?" was starting to get tiring. To avoid having to explain the whole situation to each new stranger he met, he had asked them to give him a name; they named him "Ringabel" and that became the new answer. So it was to Ringabel's great surprise when, after all the attempts by Caldislans to extract his name from him, the captain of the guard asked him a new question:

"Do you know you have a name written on your forehead?"

"What?!"

The innkeep, Owen's father, helpfully handed him a polished metal plate so that he could see for himself. As Ringabel squinted at the backwards letters in the dark metal, he exclaimed, "That must be my name!" How foresighted he must have been, to have written his name on his skin. And how odd that no one had thought to mention it earlier. But before Ringabel was long on this train of thought, he saw the amused looks exchanged between the innkeep and his son.

"You really must have lost all your memory," Owen remarked.

His father explained in more detail: "That's not your name, young man. That's a soulmark."

When they were finished explaining what a soulmark was, Ringabel's excitement had somehow grown even greater. "Really? These marks are foolproof? They're always right?"

"Yep."

That meant that, though his own name still escaped him, he now had something even better: the name of a person uniquely suited to knowing who he was. She might already be close to him and know everything there was to know about him, but even if not, at the very least he would know his own name soon enough, because it would be written on her skin! And best of all, he now had the name of his true love. His memories were easily a fair trade for that! "I must meet this Edea Lee," he said urgently. "She's the key to finding out who I am."

"Well, you should certainly seek her out," Owen said with a smile, "but don't get too excited. Soulmarks can name people you haven't met yet. She might know exactly who you are, or she might be a complete stranger. Or if you're _really_ unlucky, she's not even born yet, or she's already... ah." The captain stopped short before voicing the morbid possibility.

* * *

Ringabel's encounter with his one true love did not go as he had imagined it. For one, she did not recognize him and treated him as a total stranger. Worse, when he had eagerly asked her for the name on her soulmark, she said she did not have one! So she could not even name him. But worst of all, it was hard to miss the way her face filled with disgust every time she caught a glimpse of her name on his forehead.

"Don't be embarrassed by my soulmark, Edea," Ringabel said when he caught her doing that. "It just means we were meant to be together!"

"I have my doubts..." was Edea's only, disgruntled reply.

It was so dispiriting that Ringabel had in private asked Tiz to confirm that soulmarks really were never wrong.

"They don't lie," Tiz assured him. "But some people don't like to accept it, especially if they have an independent personality, or they've only just recently met their soulmate, or they already have someone who they were hoping would be their soulmate."

Undoubtedly the first two were true, and only Edea could say whether the third also held. But Ringabel was not deterred even a little. She may not love him now, but he was sure she would eventually. The course of true love never did run smooth, after all!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, I miss writing Ringabel.


	4. World 5: Edea

Another cadet in the officer's academy had gotten her soulmark, and the rest of the cadets were busy making a fuss over it. It was only a matter of time before they dragged her into the conversation...

"Edea, do you have a soulmark yet?" one of them asked.

She smiled. "No, not yet." Edea wasn't sure when she had started lying about her soulmark, but by this point the lie was second nature. Her soulmark was on the bottom of her foot. In a place like Eternia, socks and boots were practically required footwear, and even when they weren't, Edea was careful to wear something on her feet at all times, even when sleeping. No one outside her family had ever seen her mark.

Sometimes she felt a pang of guilt about lying. It felt disrespectful to Alternis, and it wasn't like she disliked him. In fact, she liked him quite a lot. But she resented the mark all the same -- had done so ever since she had been old enough to understand its full meaning. She hated the way it had changed Alternis's behavior toward her -- made him all awkward and stiff and strangely distant. Even worse, though, were the moments when he fussed over her or inserted himself in her decisions or otherwise behaved in a way that suggested that she was already _his._ (Thinking of those moments had the effect of quickly dissipating any guilt Edea felt and replacing it with anger.)

Alternis could be irritating, but even he wasn't the full reason for Edea's resentment. It was the whole system. She hated the way her parents already treated Alternis as a son-in-law. She hated the constant feeling of having being _promised_ to someone without having had any say in that decision. The idea of fate was unbearable, suffocating.

She hoped Alternis would forgive her, but the lie was the only rebellion she had.

* * *

"Edea, you have a soulmark, right? Tell me... Speak the name that is written there...!"

"You're mistaken," Edea said, the lie coming automatically, "I don't have one."

The strange man in front of her looked shocked. One of his companions was trying to explain to him that soulmates' marks didn't come in at the same time. It was only afterward that Edea wondered if maybe Ringabel -- if that was truly his name -- deserved the truth. Her name _was_ on his skin, after all, and he was an amnesiac. Any information she could give him might help him recover his memories.

But once she admitted to having a soulmark, she knew she couldn't take it back, so she wanted to be sure what was going on before she made that decision. And Edea was at a loss as to what was going on. She tried to run through the possibilities. Was the soulmark a fake? People were known to do shenanigans like that before, and without Ringabel's memories, there was no way of telling whether it was a soulmark or a high-quality imitation. Were there two people named Edea Lee in the world? She certainly didn't know of any other, but it wasn't impossible. Or there was a third possibility, that there were two people named _Alternis Dim_ in the world. "Alternis Dim" was a strange enough name -- not like "Edea Lee" wasn't also -- that Edea felt that possibility to be unlikely. But there was another reason why she was so eager to rule that one out: too much in her life would have to change if it were true.

Whether the soulmark was real or not, and whether it referred to her or not, Edea nevertheless found it as irritating as she found her own. Seeing her name stamped like that, right in the center of someone's forehead, it was like life had determined she would be thrown together with this man, and it had not even bothered to consult her.

* * *

The fight at the Holy Pillar changed... too much. Edea had always assumed Alternis would be a part of her life. Now he was dead... Or... did they have another chance? Was he alive again?

Everyone had seen the face that was under his mask. It was Ringabel's. Or more accurately, Ringabel's face was his, and Edea was a little more sure what Ringabel's true name was and a little less sure who, exactly, her soulmark referred to.

But on that point, the Holy Pillar had changed too little. If she and Ringabel indeed bore matching soulmarks, she was no more free than she had been before. The now-neat symmetry was an even more binding cage than the mismatched puzzle had been.

_I should tell him about my soulmark,_ she had thought a dozen times. But each time she had decided against it. The only information it would give Ringabel was his true name, which everyone by now must have already suspected. It wouldn't give him his memories back. The only other effect she could foresee such an action having was to encourage him in his relentless courtship -- and encouragement was _not_ something to be given to Ringabel lightly. 

As they awakened the crystals again and yet again, Ringabel's demeanor changed. He wasn't alone -- the whole group had grown more somber. "Edea," he said softly one day, "can we talk in private?" When she agreed, he followed it with an exuberant outburst that it was definitely, 100% a date, no takebacks, but she knew it was anything but.

"I got my memories back," he said as they walked together through the outskirts of Florem. Ringabel had bought her a jelly dessert, and it was this that Edea was picking at with a spoon as they walked.

"Oh."

They walked in silence for a while more before Ringabel turned to her and pointed to his forehead. "I remember the day I got this," he said with a smile. "I was fourteen. I was so happy."

Edea flushed self-consciously. It was odd to think that she -- or someone like her? -- could inspire feelings like that. Or maybe it was just odd to think of Ringabel as having been so young. Had he not just sprung into the world a fully fledged womanizer? Sometimes it felt that way.

"She never got hers."

There was a long silence. _I should tell him,_ Edea thought again. It would be the most natural thing in the world to say at that point: _But I do. I have a soulmark._ But generally when people said something like that, they would then show their soulmark as proof... And doing that would require Edea to stop in the middle of the road, free her hands, balance on one foot while wiggling a knee-high boot off and... ugh, it was a pain. The difficulty of baring her mark was perhaps a rather large factor in why Edea had always denied its existence.

While Edea was preoccupied with these thoughts, Ringabel continued. "I'll keep you safe," he said, with a tone quite un-Ringabel-like in its seriousness.

"Why are you saying something like _that_ all of a sudden?" But before she had finished asking the question, she knew. The Edea Lee that he had thought was his soulmate had died, just like the Edea Lee in the last world had as well. (Looking back on it, it didn't seem her chances were very good? Not for the first time, the concept of _destiny_ felt more like a crushing weight than anything remotely romantic.)

The words came automatically, tugged out of her by alarm at Ringabel's grimness and an instinctive wish to not add to his worries. "I have one -- a soulmark... I..."

"I know." Ringabel smiled.

Edea stopped walking. "Wait, you do? What -- when --"

"Did you know," he said by way of answer, "that when you use the Ranger asterisk, your feet are bare?"

Yes, she _was_ aware of that, which was why she had not spent much time in it. Even so, he had been able to spot it? "Wait, how did you --"

Letting out a laugh, Ringabel just continued walking.

* * *

_"Our original worlds."_ That was what he had said. And now he was prepping the _Eschalot_ to launch from one of Grand Ship's docks. 

It was so unexpected that Edea struggled to find any words to express her dismay. The thing she wanted to say most was _You can't_, and if it didn't sound both so childish and helpless at the same time, she would have. Instead, all she could manage to say was, "We'll never see each other again."

"We will, though," Ringabel said. He reached up to his forehead and brushed aside his long swoop of bangs with a casual motion, baring the letters underneath. "As I've always said, you're the one this mark refers to."

A complicated storm of emotions rose up in Edea's chest. He couldn't possibly know that. Given what they knew of the world, not even matching soulmarks could guarantee that.

But she understood what he meant, because she felt the same way. Because suddenly, her mark was imbued with a meaning it never had before. What had always seemed to her as a vague threat, the looming unavoidability of fate, felt now more like a promise: the promise to come together again. And for the first time in her life, her soulmark felt like a choice. And she chose to believe in uncertainty -- that despite all odds, they _would_ meet again.

"You're right," she said. The wind up here was strong and it whipped at her hair and her clothes. Edea's soulmark was not as easy to show off as Ringabel's was, but they both knew what it said. "You come back to me, Alternis Ringabel Dim!" she shouted to him over the wind as the _Eschalot_ left its berth and began drifting away from Grand Ship.

Ringabel raised his hand in a casual gesture of acknowledgement, and then the _Eschalot_ was sinking and getting smaller, until it blinked through the portal between worlds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there's barely any Tiz or Agnes in this fic. I just couldn't figure out what to do with them that didn't make the whole group have messed up soulmarks, which I thought was a bit boring to read about!


End file.
